CLIL Unit for Arts and Crafts subject

Here, you have a CLIL Unit for Arts and Crafts subject. The title is "My body" and it's for 2nd Primary Education.

I hope you enjoy it!

Training courses for teachers!

Today, I have to think about training courses:


Which training courses would you like to have access to as a teacher? Why? Which is, in your opinion, the best way to share good practice amongst teaching professionals? Why?

          Everybody thinks that Teaching Degree is an easy career because we teach children. But, they are wrong, because a teacher is learning and studying along his life. Nowadays, the society demands us a continuous learning and training in different areas, especially in a second language and in Information and Communication New Technologies (ICT).

In Spain, having a good level in English as a second language is a fundamental requisite to find a job. That’s good, because in the rest of Europe children acquire two languages at least when they are growing. In addition, the Education System has to improve the foreign languages methodologies. Spanish people are very good at grammar or writing a composition, but they find a lot of difficulties in listening, comprehension and speaking in another language. That’s why the young teachers have to take into account it and use innovative methodologies which assess the four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. For that reason, training courses about teaching in foreign languages which develop successful methodologies could be useful for the improvement of students’ linguistic competence. Personally, I would like to attend courses in which I can see first-hand methodologies like Finland’s ones.

In addition, a teacher have to change and adapt to the word demands. Technology has developed some instruments to improve the teaching and learning process: blogs, digital blackboards, webs…So, if we love our job, we will interested in use innovative ways to motivate our pupils and achieve a meaningful learning. That’s why I’m a Primary teacher specialist in Information and Communication New Technologies (ICT). Despite of that, I would like to research more: recycling is essential!

However, if we really want to improve our education, sharing our experiences, materials and resources is completely necessary! On internet, we can find a lot of information. But, in our own school there are also a lot of creative teachers with whom we should share our advices and teaching strategies. Therefore, educational discussions in small groups could be helpful for the school’s development and especially for the teachers’ enrichment.

From my point of view, a teacher have to be trained in all areas as he can, because a class is a little world in which sometimes you have to be not only a teacher but a doctor, a nurse, a policeman, a psychologist, an artist… So, we shouldn´t be limited by the government’s demands, because there are a lot of knowledge that we have to learn and then to teach our students. We shouldn´t forget our main task: prepare people to live in the real world.

The Natural Approach

Do you know the term Natural Approach? This is a method for beginners based on observation and interpretation on how a person acquires his first language. It emphasizes on communication rather than grammar. One of the things which is very important and conclusive when learning is that the input has to be comprehensible. However, if the input is not comprehensible, you can continue learning because the accent, the entonation... gives us some information. This is the non-verbal communication. 

For that reason, this kind of learning, which defends that we shouldn´t use our mother language in class, is so important in the Kindergarden. In this period, children can acquire a language more easily!

CLIL: Transforming theory into practice

Nowadays, everybody is talking about CLIL education. We can find a lot of interesting information about that new term. However, a CLIL teacher needs to learn how to transform the theory into practice and it is not easy!

Here we have a useful article in which we can learn how to prepare a CLIL unit for our subjects in only five stages. I hope it helps you!

http://www.unifg.it/sites/default/files/allegatiparagrafo/20-01-2014/coyle_hood_marsh_clil_toolkit_pp_48-73.pdf

A wonderful and helpful video for teachers!

I have found in British Council webpage a very enthusiastic conference by Carol Read who is a teacher, a teacher trainer and a materials writer with over 30 years experience in English language teaching. Nowadays, she works as a writer and international educational consultant advising on pre-primary and primary foreing language programmes and delivering customised teacher education courses.

If you are a teacher, this video could give you some resources to motivate your pupils, but I think that the real secret of motivating is the teacher, because he/she has the power to create an atractive learning.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/carol-read-secret-working-children

CLIL Article by David Marsh

Do you know the term CLIL? Maybe, you have heard it, but you don´t know where it comes from. If you are a student or a teacher and you need to know more about CLIL, this article is for you! David Marsh gives us a general idea about why it's convenient to use CLIL in our classes. And in addition, he answers the most common questions abut this kind of learning.

http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/CLILmatrix/pdf/1UK.pdf

David Marsh on CLIL

The University of Cambridge share with us a useful interview with David Marsh who has worked on multilingualism and bilingual education since the 1980s. David gives a great insight into CLIL answering relevant questions: the futur of CLIL, advice on how to start up CLIL, programme and much more. Enjoy it!

David was part of the team which conducted groundwork leading to the launch of the term CLIL in 1994. In 2002, he coordinated production of CLIL - The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential for the European Commission (DG EAC).  This overview of the situation in Europe was used in the compilation of the 2004-2006 EC Action Plan: Promoting Language Learning & Linguistic Diversity. 

David Marsh was Born in Australia, educated in the UK and now based in Finland, he has extensive experience of teacher development, capacity-building, research and consultancy in a range of different countries in Africa, Europe and Asia.